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The twenty second festival possibly had a more attractive lineup than 1981, at least if one was a heavy rock devotee. The inclusion of hard rock guitar stalwarts Gary Moore, Randy California, southern rockers Blackfoot and erstwhile pub rockers Dave Edmunds and Wilko Johnson gave the lineup spine that was missing from the previous year.

The headliners were also a tad more prestigious. The Scorpions/UFO former lead guitarist Michael Schenker, whose repertoire veered into the sort of metal jazz/rock territory inhabited by Jeff Beck- as well as delivering more predictable hard rock fare -gave Sunday night a touch of class .

Budgie and Iron Maiden were guaranteed to deliver an exciting hard rock show, regardless of whether one thought of them as innovators within the genre or not. Maiden’s credentials were reinforced by the presence of Bruce Dickinson , the erstwhile Samson lead vocalist , who had taken over the vocal spot from Paul Di’Anno .

All three of these artists were recorded by the venerable BBC and broadcast on the Radio One Friday night rock show in 1983 .

Iron Maiden

Once again, Reading delivered a mid range experience for the punters , no top end acts like Pink Floyd or the Stones which needed a mega crowd to return the organisers a profit, but a solid workmanlike bill that would leave the attendees satisfied in the main . This was what Reading was about at the time, but the formula was about to change , as 1983 would be the last Reading for several years, at long last , the never ending story was about to come to a ( temporary ) stop (by ukrockfestivals.com)

It is strange that Mean Records chose to include a couple of tracks that weren’t actually from the 82 Festival – Whitesnake’s recording was from the 79 Festival and UFO’s from 1980. Yet, they neglected to include tracks from bands that did perform like – Iron Maiden, Gary Moore and Tygers of Pan Tang. Below is the (almost) correct running order of the 1982 Reading Festival, taken from the official festival program. Perhaps they had intended to release a Volume Two (based on the name for this release – Volume One) but as far as I can gather this did not happen. (by Mr. AussieRock)

Michael Schenker

I add ten more songs from this great Festival (thanks to rockonvinyl.blogspot.de)